Description

1. Stem the corner and follow the crack to where you can diagonal to another crack breaking the right side of a roof. Follow the corner to its end and belay on the ledge. (5.8 120’)

2. Shift belay to the back wall and climb up 15’ into a short squeeze chimney. Discontinuous cracks wander up to a nice belay ledge with a tree at the base of a short stem box. (This is to the right of a right-leaning orange corner and to the left of a major, steep gully/chimney.) (5.7+ 90’)

3. Stem up onto a beautiful, left-leaning green corner. At the end of the corner keep angling left and up onto a huge ledge. Continue up into a short crack on the final, easy headwall. A little left of the top of the crack you may see the 2-bolt anchor for Dark Pope that you can belay from, otherwise make your own. (5.7+ 160’)

Descent: Walk off back, then down left into gully to base of climb.

Location

Hike around the base of the Western Buttress then up along the east face to a small, flat open area with a grassy crack (Grass Crack 5.6) heading up from the right end of the ledge. The next weakness to the left starts as a short corner into a crack, a small roof, then a final corner. This is the climb.

After much hiking we found the route, approach beta was not helpful. First pitch was fun. Difficult to find the second half of the second pitch. After the short squeeze chimney at the start of pitch 2 we ended up angling up to the climber's right following the weakness. Belayed off a tree. I still am not sure where the route is supposed to go (there are a lot of orange and green cracks). I then made up a line to the summit of great (approx 5.9) trad which mostly protected well. If you get off route it is ok.

Hey David-- Tried to PM you. It sounds like you may have been right on the route. I added a better picture of the route-- you can't really see much of pitch 2. I spent many hours on those fire-scarred, rain-washed slopes. I'm guessing you didn't catch the very start right from the switchback--I missed it several times myself in the beginning. I didn't want to build a huge cairn there, but if you spend a little time making sure you catch the start, which drops down a bit from that switchback, the rest of the way should fall into place. Let me know if you remember where you got off and maybe I can make it clearer. Hope you had a good adventure anyway.

We had a BLAST on this route today! Nice rock, cool features, varied climbing and just an all-around spectacular area. It's hard to believe a climb like this exists within only a 20 minute hike from the highway!